Gopalkrishna Gandhi: Only goodwill, harmony can withstand forces of hatred

“We have gathered here in the memory of a person who was familiar with the corridors of power and the government since childhood. But this person remained in himself and due to this he was flying high in the sky traversing the narrow canopies of power. He did not hanker after the seats of power, clouds were his home. He did not even turn to glance at the seat of power. He lived in the lap of stars. He had woven a veil of moonlight with his spouse. But destiny wanted to bring him to the ground; it was destiny that gave him power, made him head of the state. He gave the vision of a modern and dynamic India and goodwill and harmony to Indians. For Rajiv Gandhi, harmony and goodwill was not a political tactic, nor a strategy. It was inherent in his attitude, in his blood and in his characteristics.

When in politics, he was introduced with dissent and opposition, he faced opposition and opposed too but remained distant from the feeling of enmity. Opposition is one thing and enmity is completely another. Dissent is one thing and treason is completely another. The people who follow the path of enmity are the ones who look for opportunities in love and then try to strike a deal in love; people who keep friendship are the ones who see nature’s power and humanity in spontaneous love, they do not divide but multiply love.

The profound meaning of sadbhavana in English is harmony.

But what kind of harmony? We are now past the platitudes of harmony, the clichés of sadbhavana. Today harmony –sadbahvana–is much more than aapas mein sab bhai-bhai (we are all brothers). That old thought is well known to every Indian. We must speak in harmony even today. But how and what. We do not have to just acquiesce, we don’t have to be sycophants or say what the influential people will like to hear—not these tunes of fear. We must harmoniously raise the voice which calls a good thing good in softer tones and point out the bad in harsher ones.

Today harmony does not, cannot mean acquiescing with power. Harmony cannot come to terms with the discordant, the grating, the cacophonous. It must mean saying every now and then a word, a syllable, a note of truth to power, often arrogant power. The harmony must also mean taking the truth to the people who know it in their own way already and will tell you sajan re juth mat bolo, khuda ke paas jaana hai…(don’t tell lies dear, you have to face God one day…) There can be no greater harmony than in the notes of truth uttered without sanctimony but with courage.

The goodwill teaches us; the liars will always be there in every world, even amidst our own people. If someone of our own commits a wrong deed, we should point it out. If someone from the strangers does something good, then we should appreciate it. And even if something wrong is committed by us then we should accept it and improve upon it. We have learnt this from Nehru and Gandhi also from Jayaprakash Narayan. This is goodwill, this is harmony. On Jawaharlal’s demise, Rajaji, who at that time was opposing Nehru said, “He was the most civilised one of us”. Atalji had given a very moving statement at that time, “A firm advocate of Dalits has left us.”

Sadbhavana is not easy. It doesn’t consist of innocence but greatness, and sublimity. Its dignity lies in the faith This is a unique characteristic of India, an Indian can be lured, can be cajoled, misled and deluded but his soul, his innermost self can not be belied. His fajar is in Kashi and suprabhat is in Banaras.

When Gandhi sang—Ishvar-Allah tere nam, he was giving us the keys to harmony—spiritual, political, civilisational. And he was not doing that piously. He was doing that bravely, courting risk. Uttering those words when bigotry was around in the shape of knives, bludgeons and bullets, required guts. So harmony also means guts- non violent and non-compromising guts in the fight on behalf of the weak, the assaulted. The ghettoized, the despised, the whipped, cuffed, kicked, lynched, the shot at. And harmony also means being together in the face of challenges as in natural disasters. The floods in Kerala have shaken us but they also shown the power of spontaneous sadbhavana. Likewise, terror, diabolically driven, armed terror stuns us. The state moves reflexively to stop its destructive power. But so must we-civil society-respond by defeating terror’s divisive power, polarisation.

All who are opposed to Zabardasti, force, to bigotry, to the cult of fear and hate, to centralization of power, to the nexus of big power and big money, need to work together. That means shedding personal and institutional egos. The larger entity, be it a leader, a party or community is expected to make the larger gesture. Obliging a friend by denying a sister or a brother is not easy. It is in fact painful. But as Lal Bahadur once said desh ke liye jab havan hota hai, tab badey haath badii ahuti deni hoti hai. Accepting with humility and gratitude the Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavana Puraskar, I envision the democratic parties and movements of India in the wisdom of their dynamism, harmonisin their strengths to meet theb challenge of harmony’s opposite- suspicion, bigotry, violence.

“Nafrat ke zabar ka muqabila sadbhavana ke zarb se karna hai. (we have to confront the divisive force of hatred with the power of harmony and goodwill).”